SWALLOWED BAITS

[JCOOPER]

I am sure I have seen the answer to this question somewhere but I really dont know the correct answer.

When a bass takes a tube(or similar lure) deep into the throat and the bait is simply cut off, what kind of damage are we doing? Is it best to do that? I know that 75% of the ones I try to remove end up dying. Are the fish I release eventually dying? I do try to remove as much of the plastic as possible but usually the more you mess around in there the more they bleed.


any insight??

[PoorBoy]

go to home depot ( or other hardware store ) and get a pair of needle nose wire cutters. or whatever they are called. that way, if you do gut hook a fish you can just snip the hook and get the rest of the bait away from its throat. the remainder of the hook should rust out within a few days and hopefully the wound will heal and you will catch the same fish 5 years later and it will be the new state record. thats my plan anyway.

i see alot of people try like mad to get a hook out of the throat of a fish, all the while saying they dont want it to die. i have a feeling they dont want to have to retie there line. cuz the more you pull and push the bait, the more damage you are doing.

if the hook will not easily pop out, of if you can not reach the hook with snips to cut it, try to get the soft plastic out of the way and get it back in the water asap.

PoorBoy himself

[djkimmel]

We should probably have an article about handling deep-hooked bass. (Hey, that's an idea...)

Some hooks don't rust fast enough so it depends on the hook. There have been tests done on this. Some thick and plated hooks will take far longer to rust out than the bass has.

I've seen info that for some reason bass are dramatically better able to get rid of a deep hooked bait when 6 to 8 inches of line is left hanging out of their mouth. I don't know why and neither did the people who did the study, but it appears to work.

Bass have very little volume of blood, so they can't lose much which is why tongue-hooked bass often die even though the damage seems slight. Minimizing blood loss is important. Supposedly, putting them back into the water if it is cold may be better. Otherwise some of the chemicals we use have been claimed to help stop bleeding. Not 100% sure on that one yet.

I like cameraguys letter to In-Fisherman that repeated a Jeff Snyder trick for pulling throat-hooked tube (and similar single hook lures) around by pulling the line out along the gill plate and then pulling the hook out with pliers by the bend since it will now have the hook point pointing down instead of up.

This works many times for me and when done right on the bass that are hooked in the gullet area, can get them back into the water faster with less trauma and blood loss where I hope their survival rate is better.

I'll have to get some time to detail a little better how this is done (and when it seems to work best) and post it. I used it a couple time this past week on tube/jig caught smallies.

I like the needle nose clipper idea for other lure and other hook locations to remove as much as possible as quickly as possible. Thanks PoorBoy. I have cutters to remove errant lures in humans but keep putting off buying the others. I should get a pair.

[blakstr1]

Response to an old post - i pull the line out along the gill plate and trun it over almost exclusively. i believe i haven't been able to do it only 4 or 5 times, which i then remove ALL the plastic and snip the hook. there is still an illustration on the internet about how to remove it by pulling through the gill plate and i keep a laminated copy on the boat for people with me and to remind me every know and then.